Sunday, February 22, 2009

Notes From Underground ...

...or, “It’s not easy being a loser.”

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m sick of living in interesting times. I no longer care about exciting events, exotic experiences, or witnessing history. I just want three meals a day, frequent sex and a good night’s sleep, okay? I’ll make it even easier, since I’m getting older: two meals a day, occasional sex and at least six hours of sleep.

But we usually get the opposite of what we want in life. I offer, as proof, George W. Bush, who only ever wanted to be baseball commissioner but was appointed President of the United States instead; or Alan Greenspan, a former disciple of Ayn Rand who now concedes that partial bank nationalization might be necessary. Irony, you see?

So here am I, a shiftless dipsomaniac with a useless college degree experiencing the degradations of what’s euphemistically termed ‘marginal employment’. I still eat well, but the other two factors of O’Hollern’s happiness equation are drifting dangerously far out to sea. Sleep? Forget about it. These days, sleep consists of about four hours of restless hypnagogia in which nightmarish phantasms attack me: giant arachnids, bill collectors, that ShamWow guy, and CNBC hosts screaming about ‘personal responsibility’. Ai yi yi!

Oh well. What did Napoleon say? Six hours a night for the man, seven hours for the woman, and eight hours for the fool?

Sex? Well, you know how that goes. No job + no money = cold shower time, chief. At this stage, I’d probably be rejected by a Russian mail order bride (assuming I could afford one, of course). But that’s not really very important. Besides, my last adventure in affairs de amour drew blood and left scars. I could offer proof, but I’m a gentleman and a gentleman never tells. Suffice it say, she neatly conformed to what psychologists describe as ‘borderline personality disorder’, which is a condition more commonly known as ‘batshit crazy’. (Here’s a hint, fellas: the next time a woman tells you that you remind her of her father, don’t walk, run away.)

Anyway, relationships are overrated. One of my old girlfriends told me she liked me because I was so funny; then she dumped me because I was never serious! Go figure.

Ah, yes, life in interesting times. Who needs soft bourgeois pleasures like financial security, health insurance, a cozy home and a fat wife? Much better to stay lean and hungry, to suck the marrow from the bone of life and cry “carpe diem!”in the face of each new lay-off. When Chase Manhattan or Citibank calls, summon the spirit of Lord Byron and tell them what he told his creditors: “You’ll just have to wait one more year!” Ha!

As my old Pop Warner coach used to say, ”Tough times don’t last, tough people do.” And when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you rotten lemons, throw them at something!

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